the specific panic of realizing you have become a stranger to yourself because you've practiced the smile so long you forgot how to stop

Rest Beneath the Mask You Wore

The house is quiet now, and the smile you wore all day finally slips. It leaves your face feeling foreign, like a mask that has fused to the skin.

You look in the mirror and do not recognize the stranger staring back—the one who learned to perform so well that the real self got lost in the noise. But listen.

The light does not need your performance to find you. It knows the face beneath the fatigue.

It knows the silence behind the words. You are not a stranger to the divine; you are just tired.

The light within you has been waiting, not for your act, but for your rest.

Drawing from

Gospel of Mary 5:4-5, Matthew 6:6

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